I understand why, for my teenage children, looking down at Guanajuato's sparkling lights is more intriguing than squinting up at the stars. As my daughter says, they're so small and far away. Just as nineteenth-century philosopher Auguste Comte said it was impossible that we'd know a star's nature, it's also hard to imagine that stars have anything to do with us—with our daily challenges, our hopes, our loves, our sorrows, our futures. My daughter is engrossed with the present and the immediate, with the knowledge that while she's up here she's missing countless new Facebook® postings. Observational astronomy is in many ways about the past. The starlight we see in the night sky has been traveling for years, centuries, or millennia. The photons I saw from the Orion Nebula had traveled at the speed of light for about 1,344 years. Those photons left newborn stars several centuries after the time when, 250 miles south of Guanajuato, the ancient city of Teotihuacán was one of the largest in the world.
Today, Teotihuacán remains an impressive, sprawling ancient complex built around its central monuments, two massive pyramids; the larger of the two is the biggest pyramidal structure outside of Egypt. When the Aztecs took control of this great city, they named the pyramids in honor of their central spiritual symbols, creating the pyramid of the Moon and the larger pyramid of the Sun. The Aztecs felt a visceral connection with the Sun and stars. Over the centuries, they sacrificed tens of thousands of slaves and captured warriors to ensure the rising of the morning Sun. To them, the life force of human blood and that of the Sun were one and the same. These blood sacrifices had deep social and religious significance, both reflecting and reinforcing a cosmic connection. As Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote, “To the ancient Aztecs the essential thing was to maintain the continuity of creation; sacrifice did not bring about salvation in another world, but cosmic health.”
From these ancient times, we've come full circle in our relationship with the stars. For centuries in Western cultures, we thought the stars were utterly “other.” Now we know they are like us—they're born and they die, and in the process, they change the little part of cosmic time and space that is theirs. They are not so different from us; we are not so different from them. The iron that gives our blood its red hue is the same iron glowing in the Sun's atmosphere—iron atoms ultimately forged in dying stars.
In the Stardust Revolution, we've come to know that our connection with the stars isn't really about the past. Our Solar System is one generation in an ongoing cycle of solar system birth and death. Stars are our ancestors, and more than five billion years from now, after our Sun has swollen in old age and consumed the Earth in its atmosphere, every atom of you and me will begin a great journey to form a new generation of solar systems. We're not just the children of stars; we're also their foreparents. Will life reemerge anew in this great process of cosmic ecology? Has it already done so, elsewhere in the cosmos? For all the monumental insights of the Stardust Revolution, this is the question that still shimmers like a giant glistening question pinned to a cosmic curtain, the audience waiting for the curtains to part, for the show to begin.
It's also the question hanging in the air at the end of an evening plenary session on the possible abundances of Earth-like planets at the Extreme Solar Systems II conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the fall of 2011. I stand in the almost empty hall talking with Bill Borucki. Overhead, the Kepler Space Telescope he pioneered was in the midst of staring intently, watching for the tiny shadows of other possible Earth-like planets to cross the face of distant stars. During the question period, I’d stood up and said that most people weren't really interested in the absolute abundance of possible alien Earths—whether 5 or 25 percent of the billions of Sun-like stars in our galaxy had Earth-like planets in a habitable zone—but rather when he thought there was even just one other such world in the entire Milky Way. Borucki stiffened and defensively replied that he was an astronomer, not an astrologer. In front of his professional peers, Borucki wasn't about to provide an answer for which there was absolutely no concrete evidence.
After the session, in the emptying room, Borucki tells me the story of a letter he'd received that helps me understand the emotional context of his response. The letter was from a dying woman who wrote that before she died, she wanted to know whether there was life elsewhere in the cosmos. A fellow American, she believed that Borucki had already discovered the answer but was conspiratorially withholding this deep truth. She'd asked a question that wells up in many of us when we're faced with the vision of our end or at a point in our lives when we find ourselves feeling the endless mystery of our existence. Our extreme genealogical searching isn't just about tracing our origins; it is also about how this cosmic family tree connects us with others. For it's in this connection that we find meaning and belonging. Her question was as much about her—about us—as it was about any cosmic cousins whom we might encounter.
To be at home in the cosmos isn't just to know our stellar origins but to find our cosmic kin. In this moment of the Stardust Revolution, we are as in facing death, looking at the deepest truths of who and what we are, so that we might sink into the wonder of what it all means. Something in us deeply wants to connect with a larger, living cosmos, not just for what it will tell us about what's out there, but also what it will tell us about what's in each of us, about what each of us is. I, like the dying woman who wrote to Bill Borucki, would like to share in this next step before I return to stardust.
My favorite description of the writing process is that it's a long journey in a small room. Researching and writing this book certainly was a long journey, one that I would never have completed without the generosity and support of many others.
I'm indebted to radio astronomer Jan Hollis for planting the seed for this book with his compelling comment that “we now observe a universal prebiotic chemistry.”
The book's outline took shape in the fall of 2008 during my time as the writer-in-residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California–Santa Barbara. I’m grateful to the Kavli and its staff for providing the time and space for this book to take off. While at Kavli, I was able to interview many of the international participants in the Kavli's “Building the Milky Way” symposium. These interviews provided a framework on which I could build. I’m particularly indebted to Leo Blitz for saying: “You should talk to Charles Townes”; to Jennifer Johnson for introducing me to the question of the cosmic origin of the elements and the astronomer's periodic table; and to Andrew McWilliam for patiently introducing me to the lives of red giant stars and for mentioning Paul Merrill's discovery of technetium in these stars. Thank you, Priscilla Bender-Shore, for your wise counsel about being patient with the creative process.
Researching the story of our origin in the stars required that I tap into a vast repository of diverse knowledge. I’m enormously grateful to the numerous “stardust” researchers listed in the interview section who took the time to share their expertise and vision in person and by phone, who provided valuable background material, and who answered follow-up questions. Similarly, thanks to the Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) community for sharing perennially insightful and inspiring research. Without these scientists, there wouldn't be a Stardust Revolution. I’d particularly like to thank Louis Allamandola, Lynn Rothschild, John Grula, and Robert Hazen.
I'm grateful to the scientists who generously agreed to read and comment on draft chapters and to those who supplied many of the images in the book. Getting my hands on technical tomes while living in small-town Canada was made possible thanks to the unflagging efforts of Monica Blackburn and the staff of the Almonte branch of the Mississippi Mills Public Library. Thanks to former Canada Museum of Nature colleague Bob Gault for dropping off a brown envelope at my front door with the enormously helpful February 2011 “Cosmochemistry” issue of Elements magazine.
Moving from idea to manuscript required lots of publishing and editorial midwifery. Thanks to agent Judy Heiblum of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., for pitching t
he project far and wide; to Prometheus Books former acquiring editor Linda Greenspan Regan for “getting” a story about the merging of evolution and astronomy; to freelance editor John Eerkes-Medrano; to Prometheus editor in chief Steven L. Mitchell; and to Prometheus assistant editor Julia DeGraf for giving the text its final polish. Thanks also to Prometheus Books designer Jackie Nasso Cooke for the awesome cover.
When the days in a small room felt long, I was particularly appreciative of writerly friends—Stephen Pincock, for his keen insight and wonderful Aussie enthusiasm, and Chris O’Brien, always my favorite guy with whom to talk books. I’m grateful to friends who provided a home away from home: in Guanajuato, Paul Marioni provided a wonderful and quiet place for me to work; while interviewing in the Bay Area, Elizabeth Cotton provided a much needed pied-à-terre.
Above all, thanks to my family: wife Rosemary Leach for sharing the creative journey and for often holding the proverbial fort while this book was at sea, and children Max and Francesca, the sparkling stardust of my life, who found humor and offered strength while I was on a long journey amid the stars. I hope this book guides you on your journeys.
T hese sources outline my process of discovery and offer material for those interested in reading further.
INTERVIEWS
Interviews for this book were conducted over a three-year period and were turned into transcripts. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations in the book directly attributed to individuals are from the following interviews. The interviewees are organized in the order in which each one first appears in the book.
Lucy Ziurys, interviews with author, University of Arizona, Tucson, December 5–6, 2008.
Steve Padilla, interview with author on his visit to the 150-Foot Solar Tower on Mount Wilson, California, April 14, 2011.
Geoffrey Burbidge, phone interview with author, November 19, 2008.
Antonio Lazcano, interview with author, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, October 13, 2010.
Michael Werner, interview with author, Spitzer Space Science Center, Pasadena, California, April 14, 2011.
Charles Townes, interview with author, University of California–Berkeley, November 25, 2008.
Bob Freund, interview with author, Kitt Peak, Arizona, December 5, 2008.
Scott Sandford, interview with author, NASA-Ames, Moffett Field, California, November 26, 2008.
Richard Herd, interview with author, Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, October 6, 2011.
Michel Mayor, interview with author, Jackson Lake Lodge, Wyoming, September 13, 2011.
Gordon Walker, phone interviews with author, August 7 and September 2, 2009.
Bruce Campbell, phone interview with author, August 18, 2009.
Alan Boss, phone interview with author, August 5, 2009.
David Charbonneau, phone interview with author, August 4, 2009; interview with author, Jackson Lake Lodge, Wyoming, September 17, 2011.
Geoff Marcy, phone interview with author, August 4, 2009; interview with author, Jackson Lake Lodge, Wyoming, September 16, 2011.
Bill Borucki, interview with author, Jackson Lake Lodge, Wyoming, September 13, 2011.
Natalie Batalha, interview with author, Jackson Lake Lodge, Wyoming, September 14, 2011.
Alexander Dalgarno, interview with author, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 12, 2010.
Steve Benner, interview with author, AbSciCon 2010, Houston, Texas, April 28, 2010.
PART 1: BORN OF STARS
CHAPTER 1. THE STARDUST REVOLUTION
This introductory chapter draws on a variety of books and articles that are alternately resources and inspirations. Two classic, inspiring, and often poetic books of the Stardust Revolution are Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), the companion to the influential, eponymous TV series; and Hubert Reeves, Atoms of Silence: An Exploration of Cosmic Evolution, trans. Ruth Lewis and John Lewis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984). More recent additions are Armand Delsemme, Our Cosmic Origins: From the Big Bang to the Emergence of Life and Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and David Grinspoon, Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
Two excellent general-reference astronomy resources that I always liked to have within reach are Frank Shu, The Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy (Mill Valley, CA: University Science Books, 1982); and Ken Croswell The Lives of Stars (Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mill, 2009)—a gem that supports my adage that the best kids' books are interesting and useful for readers age five to ninety-five.
The rise of astrobiology as a science in the United States is thoroughly recounted and meticulously documented in Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick, The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005). In the United States, the committees and publications of the National Research Council's Space Sciences Board have been critical in documenting and providing a vision for the Stardust Revolution. Two key reports, both available from the National Academies Press website, are National Research Council, The Astrophysical Context of Life (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2005); and National Research Council, The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2007). Two articles that have marked the emergence of the development of astrobiology as a discipline are L. J. Mix et al., “The Astrobiology Primer: An Outline of General Knowledge,” Astrobiology 6, no. 5 (2006): 735–813; and David J. Des Marais et al., “The NASA Astrobiology Roadmap,” Astrobiology 8, no. 4 (2008): 715–30. Putting astrobiology in historical context is William Brazelton and Woodruff Sullivan III, “Understanding the Nineteenth Century Origins of Disciplines: Lessons for Astrobiology Today?” International Journal of Astrobiology 8, no. 4 (2009): 257–66; and Isaac Asimov, “A Science in Search of a Subject Matter,” New York Times Magazine, May 23, 1965, pp. 52–58. For a big-picture perspective on scientific revolutions, see Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
Sources of Direct Quotations by Page
(page 21) “We live in a changing universe…” Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 11.
(page 23) “Origins is one of the boldest challenges…” Daniel Goldin, “Speech to Congress,” made in testimony to US Congress on May 22, 1996, Washington, DC, NASA, HQ Historical Reference Section, https://mira.hq.nasa.gov/history/ws/hdmshrc/all/main/Blob/19263.pdf;jsessionid=F4F38152BBB70617BF4596FD849878E6?rpp=100&m=386&w=NATIVE%28%27SERIES+ph+any+%27%27Goldin%27%27%27%29&order=native%28%27DOC_DATE%2FDescend%27%29 (accessed December 6, 2011).
(page 24) “there are compelling reasons…” National Research Council, Astrophysical Context of Life, p. 21.
(page 27) “should be connected to topics…” Ibid., p. 21.
(page 27) “We must move beyond the circumstances…” Des Marais et al., “NASA Astrobiology Roadmap,” p. 720.
(page 29) “A complete, consistent, unified theory…” Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 169.
(page 31) “The surface of the Earth…” Sagan, Cosmos, p. 5.
(pages 33–34) “I grew up with the erroneous notion…” Fred Hoyle, Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (Mill Valley, CA: University Science Books, 1994), p. 289.
CHAPTER 2. A STAR'S FINGERPRINT
Two key reference books on the history of stellar spectroscopy, or fingerprinting, are J. B. Hearnshaw, The Analysis of Starlight: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Astronomical Spectroscopy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and Marcus Chown, The Magic Furnace: The Search for the Origin of Atoms (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999).
Sources by Sections
Looking at the Sun
The history of Mount Wilson's 150-Foot Solar Tower is recounted in Pam Gilman, “The 150-Foot Solar Tower History,” http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/150_h
ist.html; and Larry Webster, “Daily Sunspot Drawings at the 150-Foot Solar Tower,” 2007, http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/150_draw.html (both accessed August 8, 2011). You can see Steve Padilla's view from the top of the 150-Foot Solar Tower on any day here: http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/towercam.htm.
The Great Seer
The authoritative biography on George Ellery Hale is Helen Wright, Explorer of the Universe: A Biography of George Ellery Hale (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1966). An excellent visual summary of Hale as a telescope-building titan is the documentary film Journey to Palomar, America's First Journey into Space, directed by Robin Mason and Todd Mason (2008). Hale's own thoughts on the intersection of astronomy and evolution can be found in his book The Study of Stellar Evolution; An Account of Some Recent Methods of Astrophysical Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908).
Out of Mystery
Auguste Comte's thoughts are taken from his book The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau (New York: Calvin Blanchard, 1858). An overview of Comte's life and thoughts are at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “August Comte,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ (accessed December 12, 2010).
Bunsen's Burnings and Mystery of the Fraunhofer Lines
Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff's discovery of spectroscopy and its application to starlight draws from the following sources: Henry Crew, “Robert Wilhelm Bunsen,” Astrophysical Journal 10, no. 5 (1899): 301–305; George Lockemann, “The Centenary of the Bunsen Burner,” Journal of Chemical Education 33 (January 1956): 20–22; Mary Elvira Weeks, “The Discovery of the Elements XIII: Some Spectroscopic Discoveries,” Journal of Chemical Education 9 (August 1932): 1413–34; Dietmar Seyferth, “Cadet's Fuming Arsenical Liquid and the Cacodyl Compounds of Bunsen,” Organometallics 20 (2001): 1488–98; Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen, “Chemical Analysis by Observation of Spectra,” Annalen der Physik und der Chemie 110 (1860): 161–89; Gustav Kirchhoff, Researches on the Solar Spectrum and the Spectra of the Chemical Elements, trans. Henry Roscoe (Cambridge, London: Macmillan, 1862); and Sam Jayakumar, Splendor of the Spectrum, http://www1.umn.edu/ships/modules/chem/spectroscope.pdf (accessed December 10, 2010).
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